Heart attack patients see faster treatment: Study

(CBS/AP) Great news for heart attack patients.

A new study suggests hospitals are treating nearly all major heart attack victims within the guideline-recommended 90 minutes of arrival. Less than half of heart attack patients were treated this fast just five years ago.

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Median time to treat fell from 96 minutes in 2005 to 64 minutes last year, researchers said.

Some hospitals are faster than others. Linda Tisch was treated in only 16 minutes following a heart attack while visiting relatives near Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut this month. Emergency responders had called ahead to round up heart specialists.

"They had a brief conversation and I went straight into the OR." said Tisch, 58, of Westerly, R.I. "My family was absolutely flabbergasted." She went home two days later.

"Americans who have heart attacks can now be confident that they're going to be treated rapidly in virtually every hospital of the country," said study author Dr. Harlan Krumholz, professor of cardiology at Yale.

Krumholz said what's remarkable is that this improvement occurred without monetary incentive or threats of punishment. Instead, the government and private groups led research on how to shorten treatment times and campaigned to persuade hospitals that it was the right thing to do.

"It's amazing and it's very gratifying," said Dr. John Brush, a cardiologist at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va., who helped the American College of Cardiology design the campaign for more than 1,000 hospitals. "I'm surprised that we were able to achieve that type of dramatic improvement."

For the study - published in the journal Circulation - researchers looked at records from 2005 on more than 300,000 patients who had an emergency angioplasty at hospitals that get Medicare reimbursements, and compared them with treatment times in September 2010. Only 44 percent were treated in the recommended time in 2005, but by last year it was 91 percent.

"It's not an exaggeration to say that care of heart attacks in the U.S. has been transformed by this improvement," said Dr. Christopher Granger, a Duke University Medical Center cardiologist who led a Heart Association program to improve care. "We've made very important progress but there still is a lot of unfinished work" such as what happens before people get to a hospital, he said.

More than 3 million people worldwide suffer a major artery-blocking heart attack each year, with about 250,000 in the U.S. Heart attacks, or myocardial infarctions, are caused by clogged arteries that prevent oxygen and blood from reaching the heart.

An angioplasty -a procedure in which doctors push a tube through an artery to the clog, inflate a tiny balloon to flatten it, and prop it open with a stent - is often the best treatment. The period from hospital arrival to angioplasty is called "door-to-balloon" time and risk for dying climbs by 42 percent if care is delayed even a half hour past the recommended 90 minutes.

Patients also need to do their part, the researchers said, by knowing the warning signs of a heart attack:

• Chest discomfort that feels like pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain. This may last more than a few minutes or go away and come back.

• Pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach.

• Shortness of breath, cold sweats, nausea or lightheadedness.

Experiencing any of these symptoms? Call 911.

WebMD has more on heart attacks.